Sašo Wimmer

We are living in a world with a camera on every corner, every phone, all the time. That creates a certain awarenes of our image; be it our body weight, height, eye and skin color or even our ethnic background. Stupid, I know. But that's our reality. If you are an adult, this differences won't bother you or at least they shouldn't. But, like with a lot of things,  it's a little different with teenagers. 

Imagine being a teenager(if you're not one) in the first year of high school. New people, new surroundings, new knowledge waiting to be introduced to your young mind. You meet your new classmates and at first glance you see some differences in clothing style; maybe they're dressed according to their favorite music style or band, or some very personal style that feels comfortable for them. That's all fine and dandy. It seems nothing bad can happen, everyone appears nice and well mannered. BUT...

Here comes the internet. Annonymus, ruthless, potentially dangerous. 

Imagine yourself (or just remember) coming home from school where you had a blast whit your new "friends", logging onto your Facebook page or Instagram, Snapchat, Tiktok or whatever tickles your fancy and seeing a new comment under your post. HOW COOL! You think to yourself "Wow, my video/picture/post is spreading". Then you check the comment. "HAHAH, look how fat you are!", with added laughing smiley face. Not the kind of comment you expected, but hey, that's just one person so no harm done. But then your phone vibrates. A new comment: "You didn't have to eat ALL the burgers!". That now makes two. you maybe feel slightly bad about yourself, but hey, that's just two of them, right? Then your phone vibrates again. You don't feel like looking at the comment at first, so you wait a little bit. But the anxiety gets the better of you. You check your phone and an uncomfortable feeling rushes through your stomach. Another negative and mean comment. Now what? "What's wrong with me?", you ask yourself. "Is it my hair? My weight? Hight? The way I dress?" All this questions keep rattling around in your head. But hey.. There's still next day and next post. 

You come home the next day and check your feed. Comments. Alot of comments. You don't want to open them, you don't want to see the mean comments. But the temptation gets the best of you again. You open up the comment section and, lo and behold, more mean comments. 

This now happens every single day. Mean comment after mean comment. So much of them, a tear starts gathering in the corner of your eye. And then.. you close the comment section. "That's enough! No more!". And the posts slowly but surely stop appearing. "Fuck them!" you say and you no longer post. 

Now the question arises. Are they right? Should their oppinions matter? The answer: NO! You are how you feel. If you feel great in your body and it's not hazardous to your health, you shouldn't care about others' oppinions. I know it's difficult to do that, but you should try anyway. 

Enough of my rambling... What im trying to say is simple.

Just LOVE YOURSELF!